Saturday, October 29, 2005

NYT Editorial: Hopelessly Confused

The NYTimes editorialized about the Plame Game today in a state of utter confusion.

It attempts to put the Libby indictment higher on the list of outrage than the Clinton indictment which, it says, was "on similar charges in a much less serious context."

Really? Nowhere in the Libby indictment is there an allegation of anything more serious than lying about attempting to lead a journalist in a new direction on a story. An indictment for violating the Espionage Act would have been serious; this is grasping at charges.

Having sex with an intern is less serious than violating the Espionage Act; having sex with an intern and lying about it under oath to a grand jury is just as serious as lying under oath about when you talked to which reporter about what.

The NYT still refuses to admit that Wilson was peddling false wares:

As for Mr. Libby's case, the charges suggest that White House officials did, in fact, use Mrs. Wilson's classified C.I.A. job as a weapon against a critic of administration policy - to smear his reputation or to warn off other dissenters.

If a self-serving, wrong-thinking person is misrepresenting reality in order to pursue a personal agenda, what is an administration to do? What they did is provide background on how Wilson got his Niger gig, what he found and how he was now misrepresenting what he found. You'll never hear that from the Rovanoid NYT.

And finally, the NYT remains confused about the whole question of WMDs:

And as absorbing as this criminal investigation has been, the big point Americans need to keep in mind is this: There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Nothing in the Plame Game investigation disproved Hussein's interest in African yellowcake. The NYT also ignores the purchase of nuclear and other WMD basic technology from German, France and other countries.

The big point Americans need to keep in mind is this: There was a willful intent by Hussein to obtain these weapons using oil-for-food money. Our invasion crushed that intent before he had a chance to acquire or use them -- which is exactly what we should do when WMDs are involved.

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— High school teacher.